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hi
I'm new to mac
bought a 2nd hand mac a few weeks ago
imac 24 with 8gb ram 1tb had radian 130
anyway been having a few issues with freeing recently
had a read through a few forums and help pages
tried a few things but to no avail
i don't have any discs with it, and it looks like the recover hd is not intact
so I cant reinstall from that . and as a result i can't run the hardware diagnostics
read somewhere that holding down the option key whilst clicking the buy button for lion {app store ) will give you the option to get the downloader free to help make a recovery hd. however it did not work for me. well it did so but I'm now downloading lion and i guess I've been charged for it
i got time machine running since day one of buying it
so when lion downloads can i just reinstall it. or is it not as easy as that

right downloaded lion and managed to create a bootable pen drive, although couldn't do it with the link you posted me. anyway found another prog that when run it created it for me, very easy to use.
anyway i booted from pen drive and followed instructions .
after about 30 mins installing pc booted back up.
the strange thing was. the home screen was the default one making me think that lion had been reinstalled, but all my progs were still there . my book marks were all intact. intact the only thing different was the desktop wallpaper ,and some progs when started came on like they were fresh installs
is this normal or as lion reinstalled from time machine

Yes just running the Lion installer does not erase the hard drive, leaving all your files and applications in place. You will find the version installed may well be OS X.7 and you will need to update via software update.

If this presents any problems go to the Apple web site and download the OS X.7.4 Combo Updater.

been ok for a week or so since reinstalling lion
last couple of days I've had lock ups for no apparent reason
either surfing the web or moving files or opening documents etc. so can't pin it down to anyone event
i can't test hardware coz i aint got the apple aht
I've run memory check and all seems ok
I'm running temp monitors memory usage check nd smt fan control
any way i can get the apple hardware test from anywhere

is it possible to do a clean install of lion
when i had issues on windows i used to format and reinstall
can i do the same on mac
been reading up on it but its confusing
i can get all the installed software again so don't really need to clone the drive. i do have time machine from the day i bought the machine about a month ago

thanks for the help but i read the article and
i don't see how i can get the aht to work
i don't have original disc to boot off and its not installed on the hard drive anywhere
i CAN get hold of a retail copy of snow leopard or retail copy of lion,
will i be able to get it off one of them.
I've been monitoring, activity monitor a lot along with temperature and memory usage.
i notice a process called cfbakd was using a lot of cpu, after a read up on google it appears it was left over from when disk drill was installed so i deleted all its traces,
i also noticed when time machine was left on, it pushed temp and cpu up a lot. so i disabled it, and just switch it on and back up say every couple of hours, then switch it off again
as i mentioned in an earlier post, i would like to do a clean install of lion is this wise.?
it was never recommended in windows to upgrade os, but with mac it seem to be normal